Dr. B.S. Rao
CITATION
An alumnus of Guntur Medical College who spent 15 years practising medicine in India, England and Iran, Dr. B.S. Rao and his wife Dr. Jhansi Lakshmi Bai returned to India in April 1986 and laid the foundation of the Sri Chaitanya Group of institutions with the promotion of the first girls’ junior college in Poranki, Vijayawada in then undivided Andhra Pradesh. The objective was to provide high-quality affordable post-secondary education, and prepare and mentor students for competitive public entrance exams of the IITs, NITs, AIIMS and other reputed medical and engineering colleges countrywide. Since then over the past 30 years, the Hyderabad-based Sri Chaitanya Group has recorded phenomenal growth with its junior college network transforming into India’s — and Asia’s — largest provider of higher secondary (classes X-XII) education. Currently, the Sri Chaitanya Group comprises 198 junior colleges and 274 K-12 schools dispersed across seven states of the Indian Union with an aggregate enrolment of 500,000 students.
A visionary educationist, Dr. Rao has also pioneered integration of junior college syllabuses with competitive entrance tests curriculums, introduced residential coaching programmes and educated parents residing in tier-II and III cities about ways and means to aid and enable their children for national tests. Thus far, the Sri Chaitanya Group has contributed 2,000,000 class XII school-leavers to the Indian economy and enabled the admission of over 1,000,000 students into the IITs, NITs, AIIMS and other top-ranked engineering and medical colleges countrywide.
In recognition of his extraordinary contribution to higher secondary education, particularly in educationally neglected tier II and III cities, innovation of professional exams preparation pedagogies and systems and upgradation of K-12 education in peninsular India, the Board of Directors and Editors of EW are pleased and privileged to confer the EW Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2015 upon Dr. Rao and induct him into the EW Hall of Fame of Indian Education.